


All Fools' Day

by equestrianstatue



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Identity Porn, M/M, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 09:27:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21177146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equestrianstatue/pseuds/equestrianstatue
Summary: “There is a long and noble tradition,” says Arthur, pulling back the chair, “although one that has fallen out of favour with my father of late, in which you now have the honour to partake.” He nods at his own place. “So sit down.”Merlin, frowning, takes a step towards the table.“Actually, wait,” says Arthur. “Lock the door first. I donotwant anybody walking in on this.”Merlin looks faintly alarmed, but he turns, slides home the bolt on Arthur’s door, and sits, as he is told, in Arthur’s place.





	All Fools' Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enid_42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enid_42/gifts).

Gaius, when he opens the door to Arthur’s knock, looks surprised to see him. “Good morning, sire.”

“Where’s Merlin?” says Arthur. Having undergone the ignominious business of having to wake himself, dress himself, and search the corridors for another servant to bring him breakfast, Arthur is not at the height of patience.

Gaius frowns, confused. Then his head turns involuntarily in the direction of the door to Merlin’s room, and he looks apologetic instead.

“He’s still in bed?” asks Arthur, slightly astonished. Merlin usually has a wildly complex excuse for his lateness. It’s something of a disappointment to discover that today’s dereliction of duty appears to be down to sheer laziness and nothing more.

“My apologies, sire,” Gaius says. “I thought he had already left for your chambers, otherwise I would have woken him. I am sure he did not mean to sleep so late.”

“And why would he do that?”

Gaius’s expression, though mild, is not quite mild enough.

“You’re not,” says Arthur, grimly, “going to tell me he was in the tavern.”

“Sire… ” says Gaius, placatingly, but Arthur is already looking around the room for something with which he can wake Merlin in as undignified a manner as possible. There is a pail of water by a workbench, and Arthur has picked it up and started in the direction of Merlin’s door before Gaius says, “Sire, perhaps you might be persuaded to show a little leniency. Yesterday was the anniversary of his birth.”

“Was it?” asks Arthur, surprised. Although there is no reason at all, he supposes, why he would have known this. It is not a piece of information for which he can think of any particular use.

“Indeed. If you will let me wake him, I am sure he will be with you in a matter of moments.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Arthur puts down the pail of water.

“I will make sure he is aware of your generosity,” says Gaius, his eyebrow arched.

“Do,” says Arthur.

Arthur had kept Merlin working until late last night, although it had been for good reason. His rooms had been left unswept for days, and so he had made Merlin clean them, under his eye, until they met a prince’s standards.

“Why didn’t he ask for the evening off?” Arthur asks.

“I don’t know, sire,” says Gaius, in a tone of voice that makes it clear that he is well aware Arthur would not have granted it to him.

Sighing, Arthur heads back to the door. “Have Merlin come to the armoury at once.”

“Of course, sire.”

Usually Arthur would be more than happy to wait in Gaius’s rooms, where he could enjoy listening to Merlin being scolded awake like a child, and the sight of him stumbling into the room and into a hurried, dishevelled bow. But instead, Arthur leaves. In fact, he walks to the armoury feeling strangely put out. Not just by the inconvenience of the morning in general, but, he supposes, because he does not like being the last person to know something. Although it is not as if Merlin has kept the date of his birth a secret. There is no secret in something that has no reason to be told.

All the same, Arthur feels somehow slighted. Merlin has been in his service for a little over a year, and so his birthdate must have passed in Camelot once before, too. But the idea of it has simply never crossed Arthur’s mind. The anniversary of Arthur’s own birth, which has been celebrated as long as he has lived as a festival day in Camelot, is a day that he of course enjoys— although he still carries with him from childhood the strict understanding that it is a day on which he is even more than usual under scrutiny, and must be on his best behaviour. He has never really considered what the same occasion might entail for other people. Perhaps Gaius will have given Merlin a gift, or cooked him a favourite meal.

Arthur resolves that, under the circumstances, it would be generous of him to say nothing of Merlin’s lateness. Merlin will doubtless be expecting a serious rebuking, and quite possibly extra duties in punishment, which Arthur supposes in this instance could be waived.

And so, when Merlin arrives in the armoury ten minutes later, his indiscretion goes unmentioned. Looking warily jubilant to have got away with it, he sets to work polishing Arthur’s armour with particular effort. Arthur watches him for a moment— the dark shock of Merlin’s hair bent over the bright gleam of metal, his lips pursed in concentration— and then he goes about the rest of his day with a feeling of great and generous magnanimity.

But as the day wears on, the feeling does not last. Arthur cannot quite shake the irritation of knowing that Merlin had spent all of the previous day barely out of his sight, and yet had not seen fit to mention that it was his birthday. But then what, exactly, would Arthur have done about it if he’d known? He couldn’t exactly have presented Merlin with a gift. What would Merlin do with some valuable item, other than lose it, or a horse or a dog, other than let it run to seed? Arthur could, he supposes, have surprised them both by actually agreeing to give Merlin the night off.

By the time evening is setting in, and a morning’s training, an afternoon’s inspection of his knights, and an audience with his father have all failed to drive the strange little distraction from his mind, Arthur has come up with a new idea. This one, he thinks, is actually not bad.

The evening promises no state occasion, reception or banquet which Arthur must attend, leaving him free to eat by himself. He finds a kitchen boy in the corridors, and instructs him to bring him his meal in his chambers as soon as it is prepared, without waiting for Merlin to collect it. Merlin, he explains, should be sent on afterwards. This order, being given to someone who isn’t Merlin, is carried out immediately, correctly, and without complaint.

When Merlin arrives in Arthur’s room a short while later, pushing open the door as he knocks, Arthur’s small dining table is already set. There is a game pie, half a capon, bread, fruit, and ginger pudding. Merlin looks relieved to discover that the meal is, as he has presumably been told, already here. There is a faint flush in his cheeks.

“Sorry,” he says, sounding a little breathless. “The kitchen said your dinner had already gone.”

Arthur, who is stood waiting by the side of the table, ignores this. “Sit down, Merlin.”

“I’m sorry?”

“There is a long and noble tradition,” says Arthur, pulling back the chair, “although one that has fallen out of favour with my father of late, in which you now have the honour to partake.” He nods at his own place. “So sit down.”

Merlin, frowning, takes a step towards the table.

“Actually, wait,” says Arthur. “Lock the door first. I do _not_ want anybody walking in on this.”

Merlin looks faintly alarmed, but he turns, slides home the bolt on Arthur’s door, and sits, as he is told, in Arthur’s place.

Arthur comes to stand at his right-hand side, leaning in to begin carving the capon. He feels Merlin looking up at him.

“Arthur,” Merlin says, “what are you doing?”

“I heard from Gaius you were in the tavern last night,” Arthur says, carefully serving a slice of meat onto Merlin’s plate.

Merlin almost physically recoils underneath him. “Ah. About that— ” 

“It’s fine,” says Arthur, although this, if anything, makes Merlin look more worried. “Really. I didn’t know it was your birthday.”

“Ah,” says Merlin again. He still sounds wary. “Yes.”

“Well, here we are. This is your gift.”

Merlin frowns, and looks back and forth between Arthur and the plate again. “Dinner?”

“Once a year,” Arthur says, now cutting into the pie, “midway through the winter solstice festival, there is a day on which the king may set aside his crown, and a commoner takes his place. The commoner has the power to pardon anyone who comes to him for clemency, and the king is relieved of the burden of his responsibility. For a short while, at least.”

Merlin says, “That didn’t happen last winter.”

“No. Nowadays it is a custom more remembered than observed, and in Camelot it hasn’t been practised for many years. But I thought we could make an exception for the evening.”

“Oh,” says Merlin, slowly, still sounding as though he thinks there is some trick coming. “Right.” He watches as Arthur finishes filling his plate with food.

“Will you take wine or water?” Arthur asks, his voice a pretty good impersonation of a servant’s demure blandness. “My lord,” he adds, considering that he may as well do the thing properly.

Merlin blinks at him dumbly for a moment. Then he says, “Wine.”

Arthur pours the wine without spilling any, takes two steps back from the table, and stands quietly with his hands clasped behind him. Merlin turns awkwardly in his chair, and says, “Aren’t you going to eat too?”

“Of course not, sire.”

Merlin’s mouth twitches a little in something between discomfort and amusement. “Right,” he says, again, and turns back to the food. Slowly, delicately, he picks up a piece of the meat and puts it in his mouth. “It’s good,” he says, sounding half-surprised, and then has another mouthful. Apparently finally convinced that this isn’t some form of punishment, he drinks from the goblet, too, and then starts in on the pie. “It’s really good.” When Arthur doesn’t reply, he turns again to face him, and says, “You’re quiet.”

“Naturally.”

“Naturally?”

Unable to resist, Arthur says, “A manservant doesn’t speak until he’s spoken to.”

Merlin rolls his eyes. “Oh, all right.” He turns back to his food, but not for long, before he says, “Very odd, though, having to eat in silence while someone else is in the room. Doesn’t seem natural.”

“Only the result of good breeding.”

“And you’re just going to stand behind me the whole time?”

“Until you need something, my lord.”

Merlin, looking only slightly unnerved, turns back to his food again, and Arthur grins. He can’t deny that he had, really, known that this would throw Merlin off balance a little. Of course Merlin would assume that having Arthur wait on him would be too good a chance to pass up. But for all his insolence, indolence, and general refusal to behave like a servant, Merlin only knows the life that he knows, and people rarely like it when what they know is taken away from them.

So Arthur had thought he would enjoy watching Merlin squirm in discomfort, and that even this pretended taste of power might teach him a bit of a lesson in accepting one’s station. But Arthur had also remembered the custom of the commoner-kings from when he was younger, from the few years of peace in which his father had bent to the public will and allowed the custom, briefly, at court. He remembered the mounting sense of excitement and the odd, almost fearful thrill as the day approached: the understanding that everything he knew about the world was about to be upset, only to be put back together again just a few hours later, as if it had never happened. And the idea of reliving that feeling, in some small way, had been too good a chance to pass up too.

“I don’t know how you put up with it,” says Merlin, now. “It’s a bit strange. Having someone watch you all the time.”

Arthur can’t think of anything less strange. “Well, I suppose some people simply aren’t born for greatness.”

Merlin snorts. “I don’t think that’s the problem.”

“If you can’t manage dealing with one manservant…”

“Oh, I can _manage_,” says Merlin. “Do you want me to do it properly?”

“That would seem to be the point, wouldn’t it?”

Merlin, his body twisted so that he has one elbow hooked over the back of Arthur’s chair, the better to look at him, raises his eyebrows. Some twitch of amusement dances at the corners of his mouth. Arthur wonders, not for the first time, what the two of them would have made of each other if their paths had crossed years earlier, as boys. Sometimes he wonders if they wouldn’t have got on quite well. If Merlin had grown up in Camelot, perhaps. But then again, even if he had, Arthur wouldn’t have been allowed to play with him.

“Fine,” says Merlin, swallowing his mouthful of pie. He sits up a little straighter in his chair, arranges his face into an expression that is presumably supposed to be imperious, and beckons sharply with one finger. “My cup is empty.”

It’s not bad. Arthur bites back a smile. He steps forward, refills the goblet, and executes a small bow before he returns to his place.

Merlin holds up his goblet, swills the wine contemplatively for a moment, and takes a sip. “It’s not very good.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, my lord.”

“Come here and taste it. Do you think this is fit for royalty?”

Arthur takes the cup as Merlin proffers it to him, and drinks a small mouthful. The wine is, in fact, exceptionally good. Either Merlin can’t tell, or has just decided this is the game he wants to play. Arthur decides to go along with it. Or, no, even better— “I wouldn’t know,” he says, demurely. “I don’t have the palette.”

Merlin’s mouth curves into half a grin before he can stop himself, and Arthur, too, has to struggle to keep his expression neutral. This is fun. More fun than he had expected.

“Of course not,” Merlin says, and sighs heavily. “Small beer for breakfast for you, I shouldn’t wonder?”

“Sorry to say so, my lord.”

“Well, we can’t all be born to appreciate the luxuries of life.” Merlin picks up an apple and bites into it. “You can have the leftovers, if you want them.”

“Oh, no, sire, I couldn’t.”

“Give them to the dogs, then. Do you know, I sometimes think I get on better with my dogs than with anyone else? It must be the similarity of our temperaments.”

“How’s that, my lord?”

“I’ll run after anything that moves. And my bark is significantly worse than my bite.”

Arthur almost makes a noise of indignation before he snaps his mouth shut. Of course Merlin is seeing what he can get away with. Well, Arthur has never played a game he couldn’t win before, and he’s not about to start now. He doesn’t rise to it.

“I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself, my lord,” he says, instead.

“Hard on myself? Never. I can’t think of anything so wonderful as being compared to a dog, except maybe being compared to a horse.”

“You’re a man of strange tastes, sire.”

“You’re telling me.” Merlin puts his apple core down on the plate, and starts in on the ginger cake. “They must come of my good breeding.”

Arthur bites his tongue in the face of the bright spark in Merlin’s eyes. It’s not as if Merlin will even get a good story out of this. If he were to tell anybody about what happened tonight, they wouldn’t for a moment believe him.

The two of them will know about it, though. Arthur wonders whether he’ll mind when Merlin, knowing full well he’ll get a cuff round the ear for the trouble, inevitably sees fit to remind him of it nonetheless. He thinks, actually, that he won’t mind all that much. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. After all, this was Arthur’s idea. He’s set the rules of the game, and besides, he’s winning. Although Merlin is playing rather better than he had expected.

When Merlin has finished the cake, he drains his goblet, sighs in contentment, and sits back in his chair. “That was good,” he says. Then he turns around to look at Arthur again. His mouth is just a little open, red and questioning, his eyebrows are raised, and his expression asks: _Are we done now?_ But, not wanting to be the first to cave in, he doesn’t ask it aloud. Well, Arthur’s not going to give up either. He looks back at Merlin, and says nothing.

“It’s getting cold in here,” says Merlin, after a moment. “You can set the fire.”

Arthur goes to kneel by the hearth, piling the kindling, striking the flints until they spark. The fire crackles into life. Behind him, he hears Merlin pushing back his chair and getting to his feet. When Arthur stands up again, Merlin is leaning with one hand on the table, watching him. The line of his body is a thin slant inside his clothes.

“I can’t believe you actually know how to do that,” Merlin says.

Arthur tuts. Of course he knows how to set a fire. He spends enough of his life on patrol, camping out in the forests. But then, he supposes, Merlin’s always been dragged along with him this past year, even on short journeys. Merlin’s been the one making camp, gathering wood, cooking food. Arthur didn’t always used to take a manservant with him, but it’s become normal, somehow. The knights have begun to expect it. The familiar shape of Merlin crouched by the side of the fire, the flame-warmed glow of his face as he pokes at the wood.

“Of course I do,” Arthur says. “A servant might do a good impression of being an absolute imbecile, but almost all of them have a few saving graces if you look hard enough.”

Merlin pulls a face, clearly not sure whether or not he’s being insulted. Arthur isn’t entirely sure either.

Then Merlin asks, “What about this pardoning business, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“I have the power to pardon people, didn’t you say?”

“I suppose so, yes,” says Arthur. “What a shame there’s nobody here to come and beg for your merciful judgement.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Surely there must be some burden I can relieve you of. Some transgression weighing you down.”

Arthur almost laughs, half-surprised, half-affronted. “A prince does not require a pardon.”

“But you’re not a prince, are you?”

Arthur twists his mouth, outraged, trapped, and impressed. This, of course, would be a very reasonable time to call the whole thing off, and Merlin knows it, too. His fingers are fidgeting by his sides, the quirk of his mouth tentative.

But what Arthur feels, actually, is a strange little thrill of freedom. He thinks again of those few short, frozen days of upheaval, each one hidden in the depths of winter. Perhaps only eight hours of daylight in them, and yet they had seemed expansive almost beyond imagination. _Do not forget_, his father would tell him, stern-faced in the morning, before the ceremonial laying off of his crown— _Do not forget that you are still a prince, and the people look to you as an example, today as much as any other_. And Arthur, eight or nine years old and almost physically wriggling in his desire to end the audience, saying, _Yes, my lord_, and bowing, absolutely desperate to get away and cram as much into this one wild day as he could.

“No,” he says, after a moment. “I’m not.”

“So what would you like me to forgive you for?”

Arthur scoffs, instinctively, although the question is a strange one. Forgiveness is not something with which he has much experience. As a child, transgressions were either undiscovered, or punished immediately when found out. And now that he is older, he can’t really think of anything that would require it. He obeys his father. There is little opportunity, really, to do wrong.

“Well,” Merlin says, the corner of his mouth lifting, “you’re pardoned all the same.”

“If there _were_ anything to pardon, it would be very dangerous to forgive a man without knowing the nature of his crime.”

Merlin looks at him levelly. “Not if you trust him,” he says.

Arthur chews on his tongue. He doesn’t reply.

The quiet hangs between them for a short while, the fire crackling softly. Merlin scuffs at the floor for with his shoe, and opens his mouth, but then closes it. Arthur wonders if he is about to put an end to this. But then, when Merlin does speak, he says, “I suppose you’ll have to undress me for bed.”

Arthur frowns. Merlin can’t very well actually sleep in Arthur’s bed, while Arthur— what, goes off to sleep in Gaius’s quarters? But there is a challenge in Merlin’s face that Arthur, obviously, cannot fail to meet.

“Imagine,” Merlin says, holding out his arms, “not being able to do this for yourself.”

Arthur rolls his eyes, and walks over to him.

“Except I don’t have to imagine,” Merlin continues, “because I’m so rich and lazy that I literally employ somebody to take my clothes off for me.”

“Not only for that,” mutters Arthur. But he goes to stand behind Merlin, and reaching forward, he lifts the material of Merlin’s jacket away from his shoulders. He slides it away from his shirt, one sleeve at a time.

Arthur lays the jacket on his bed, and then comes round to face Merlin again. Merlin looks slightly taken aback, but he says nothing. Ah, Arthur thinks, he didn’t expect me to do it. Of course he didn’t. Arthur isn’t sure he expected to do it either.

It ought to be the shirt next, only of course Merlin’s scarf is in the way, so Arthur leans forward and reaches behind Merlin’s collar to untie it. His fingers brush against the cloth of Merlin’s shirt, and then against the back of Merlin’s neck. The skin there is very hot. Then the scarf, unravelled, comes away in his hands.

Arthur steps back. The air around them feels close, stiflingly warm, as if the fire has just been stoked. Merlin is staring at him, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open. Arthur’s hands twitch with Merlin’s scarf in his fingers. He wonders whether he should drop it next to the jacket on the bed. Merlin fidgets. Arthur swallows, and looks Merlin in the eye, and asks, silently: _Had enough yet?_

“All right,” Merlin says. He seems almost to fold in on himself, some tight-pulled cord in him slackening as he speaks. It’s over. He’s surrendered. “All right, I think I’ve got the gist.” Then he half-smiles, some shadow of his usual self, and plucks his scarf back out of Arthur’s hands.

“Yes, well, I would hope so,” Arthur says. He watches as Merlin ties his scarf back on. There is a strange rush of something in his breast, some kind of dissipating adrenaline, as if he’s just dodged a mortal sword-blow. His heart is hammering.

Merlin picks up his jacket, and wriggles his way back inside it. Then he shifts a little awkwardly where he stands, and clears his throat.

Arthur feels unusually unsure of what to say. That immediate, shocking wave of tension is gone, and they are back where they should be. The world is back to normal. But the room is still an uneasy, uneven space. The table is still there— Arthur’s table, where Merlin ate his dinner, only a few feet from the fire that Arthur lit. But even so, Arthur is in charge again now. In fact, hasn’t Arthur been in charge of this from the start?

“Well, did you enjoy it?” he asks.

Merlin says, “Yes, very much.”

“Learn anything?”

“Probably that we should just get rid of servants altogether,” says Merlin, with a wry little grin. “It’s about as rotten having one as it is being one.”

“I think you’ll find I was an exemplary servant.”

“Yes,” says Merlin. He chews at the inside of his mouth. “Well. Thank you, I suppose.”

“You’re welcome.”

There is a pause, and then Merlin says, “Are we— done, now? Shall I go?”

Arthur is about to say yes, and send Merlin away, maybe even tell him to take the day off tomorrow. The week off, perhaps. Unprecedented, but probably sensible, under the circumstances.

But when he opens his mouth, what Arthur says is, “You haven’t yet undressed me for bed.”

Merlin eyes snap up to meet his, surprised. Arthur tries not to look like he hasn’t just set off a watch-bell ringing inside his own head. They stare at one another. And then Merlin says, “Of course.”

They are silent while Merlin undresses him. His hands are light, fumbling a little, as he kneels to unlace Arthur’s boots, and then stands in front of Arthur and peels his jacket away from his body. He has done it a hundred times before, and yet— Arthur stares over Merlin’s shoulder, thinking about that warmth at the back of his neck, of the tiny intake of breath he had heard Merlin take when Arthur’s fingers touched his skin.

Next, Merlin ought to take hold of the sleeves of Arthur’s shirt, and pull it neatly over his head. But instead, his eyes on the floor, Merlin pulls at the ties of Arthur’s trousers until they come loose. Then he stops. Arthur pushes his trousers down over his hips, and steps out of them.

Arthur is hard. It’s obvious, now that he’s wearing only his shirt. When he looks up at Merlin, Merlin is staring at it. Then he jerks his head up to look Arthur in the face.

“Will that be all, sire?” he asks, his voice very tight.

Arthur steps forward. It’s strange, being half out of his clothes, with Merlin still wearing in all of his, except of course it happens every morning and every evening. But the way Merlin is looking at him, like he’s afraid and confused and desperately hopeful all at once, is— new, perhaps. Or perhaps Arthur just hasn’t been paying an awful lot of attention.

Then he kisses Merlin. Quite hard. He wants him, after all.

Arthur half-expects Merlin to go still, freeze up, under the press of his mouth. Supposes that he might need to be gentled, cajoled. He is entirely wrong. Merlin sags against him at once, his body falling against Arthur’s, his mouth coming open. His hands scrabble at the front of Arthur’s shirt, clutch at his collar. Arthur huffs out a breath, pleased and surprised, against Merlin’s lips, but not for very long, because Merlin now won’t stop kissing him. He is indiscriminate and excited and rather wet about it, his mouth hot and slightly sloppy against Arthur’s lips and teeth and chin. Arthur tries to line their mouths up, to kiss him properly, and Merlin presses back against him as gratefully and messily and uselessly as if he’s never kissed anyone before. Oh, it occurs to Arthur, suddenly, _oh_, he’s never—

“Arthur,” Merlin says, against his mouth, and he sounds so pleased, so dazzled, in a way that makes Arthur’s heart kick sharply against his ribs. “You never said— ”

“No,” Arthur agrees. He pulls backwards, just slightly, and then he runs his fingers over the back of Merlin’s neck again, above his scarf. Merlin shivers, and makes a small, stunned noise, and kisses him again.

There’s something oddly charming in the desperate, inexpert onslaught of Merlin’s attention, the openness of his wanting. There is a vitality to it, the sort of guileless commitment with which Merlin seems to run headlong into any kind of danger. Arthur likes it, and he can’t think of a single reason to slow him down. _You never said_, as Merlin had breathed out against him. No. He hadn’t. It had seemed— far too complicated an idea to explore. But now, with Merlin’s hot breath in the crook of his neck, making his skin tingle, Arthur is fairly amazed to realise how long he appears to have spent wanting something and not getting it.

When Arthur steers them backwards, against the nearest of the four heavy bedposts, Merlin pulls the full length of Arthur’s body against him, and for a moment or two there is nothing in it besides base instinct, an animal need for proximity and for pleasure. Arthur grinds his hips against Merlin’s, through the thin cloth of his shirt, and hears him gasp. Then he puts his hand down between Merlin’s legs and presses his palm there, feeling how hard he is, and Merlin makes a loud, unendurably wanton sound.

Arthur grins as he shapes the outline of Merlin’s prick with his fingers, rubbing it through the old cloth of his trousers, firm and clever. He wants this. He _wants_ this. But then, before he can do anything else, he realises that Merlin’s breath is shaking in his ear, and that the twitching of Merlin’s muscles and the startled little hitch in his throat are because he is coming, already, with nothing but the heel of Arthur’s hand against him. Merlin makes a small, cut-off sort of cry, his head pressed back against the pillar, and Arthur feels the warmth and dampness of it spreading under his hand.

“Oh,” Merlin says. He is pink with arousal and embarrassment as Arthur looks up at him. “I really didn’t mean to— ”

Arthur doesn’t much care. Actually, he finds, he rather likes it, the immediacy and the honesty and the mess of Merlin coming apart so quickly. Not to mention that it is now, of course, his turn.

“Merlin,” Arthur says. He presses one last time against the wetness between Merlin’s legs, making him shiver, and then he takes hold of Merlin by the wrist instead. He guides Merlin’s hand to sit over the place where Arthur’s prick sits, hard and waiting, under his shirt.

Merlin’s apology stutters to a halt. He looks Arthur in the eye, the back of his hand pressed lightly against him. His tongue flickers out over his lips, momentarily, and Arthur looks steadily back at him. _Go on. I dare you._

Then Merlin grins at him, grabs the hem of Arthur’s shirt, and pulls it over his head. Arthur is finally naked, his body taut and flooding with energy, aware that he’s about to fight or run or fuck and needs the wherewithal to get it done. Merlin knees him in the thigh, eyes bright, nudging him in the direction of his bed.

Arthur climbs on to the counterpane and leans back, propping himself up on the pillows. He lets Merlin crawl after him, climb on top of him, so that his knees are tucked against either side of Arthur’s hips.

“Hmm,” Merlin says, looking down at Arthur in consideration. Then, lips pursed, he wraps his hand around Arthur’s prick where it bobs up between them, and smiles when Arthur sighs and lets his head fall back.

Merlin squeezes, and then rubs: experimentally, not particularly cleverly or carefully, but with great enthusiasm. Arthur grits his teeth, groans, lets the primal wave of pleasure and satisfaction push its way through his body. Then Merlin braces his other hand by Arthur’s head, so that he can lean down and kiss him while he’s touching his prick, and Arthur feels his skin heat like spreading fire. He winds his hands into Merlin’s hair, and holds his head in place for a while, so that he can kiss Merlin quite as thoroughly as he would like to— hot and biting, licking right up against the back of his teeth— while Merlin gasps his approval, and grips Arthur’s prick even tighter, pulling at him until he can’t think.

It doesn’t take Arthur very long to come either.

Merlin is looking down at him, afterwards. His hair is messy where Arthur has pushed his hands through it, and his eyes are wide and dark and glinting. Arthur rubs his hands gently along Merlin’s thighs, where they are still nestled up against his hips, and still clothed.

“Well,” Arthur says, “Happy birthday.”

Merlin snorts, surprised. “If you think _I_ should be grateful for getting _you_ off— ”

“I do,” Arthur says. “There are any number of people who would give their right arm for the privilege.”

Merlin rolls his eyes, and says, “More fool them.”

Arthur slides his hand a little further up Merlin’s leg so that he can tug at the fastenings of his trousers, and slip his hand inside— where, during the chore of bringing Arthur off, he seems to have become half-hard again. Merlin shifts in surprise, biting his lip, as Arthur finally gets a hand around him. He listens to Merlin hiss, sensitive, as Arthur makes a loose fist around his prick, teases at the tip of it with his thumb. He’d rather like Merlin to take his clothes off, but also—

“Well,” Arthur says, “If this gift is of so little interest to you, then I suppose there will be nothing else I need tonight.” He pulls his hand away, wipes it absently against his leg. “You may leave.”

Merlin stares back at him, his mouth open in indignation, a slight crease of something else in his frown. Arthur could draw this out, he supposes. But he doesn’t actually want to make Merlin unhappy, not really. Perhaps it’s because he’s just come, but he is feeling uncharacteristically fond.

“Because I’m starving,” Arthur clarifies. “You’ll have to go and get me some dinner.”

Merlin laughs aloud, and Arthur laughs too. “And what do you want me to say you did with the first one?” Merlin asks. 

Arthur shrugs. “You’re very resourceful,” he says. “You’ll think of something.”

Merlin looks down at him with a strange sort of expression, and Arthur realises that he hadn’t injected quite as much sarcasm into that statement as perhaps he ought to.

“Yes, I am,” Merlin says, as he climbs off him, and Arthur lets him get away with it.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story, you can also reblog it [on tumblr](https://justlikeeddie.tumblr.com/post/188602193172/all-fools-day-equestrianstatue-merlin-tv)!


End file.
